History Channel

Clearly, as Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the magazine this week, we Americans don’t hate soccer, given the amount of time we’re spending watching it on television as well as playing it in schoolyards throughout the country. I have the pleasure of the “I was there” version, having played and watched lots of soccer early on, in elementary school, during the Johnson years, thanks to a friend’s father, a European immigrant who owned a semi-pro team in Queens. But also being a congenitally devout fan of baseball, I can’t resist speculating on the cultural differences that the two sports embody and bring to light.

Soccer is the game of the longue durée, of deep and loamy history. The ball flies over the field in one direction and flies over the field in the other, darts or rolls this way and that with scarcely an interruption, while the players’ movement seems incremental and their progress, sedimental—until a sudden, unforeseeable crisis erupts with potentially catastrophic results. Soccer is a game of deep-rooted and slowly changing cultures that get shaken by revolutionary cataclysms. (The unique privilege of the goalie to use his hands reflects the position of the army and the police, the armed guardians, in a society of otherwise-restricted subjects.)

By contrast, baseball is a game of discrete events, each of which is a potential crisis, yet one which emerges precisely from precise circumstances—you can’t hit a grand slam if the bases aren’t loaded. Baseball is a game of constitutional clarity (there are no gradual or unforeseen crystallizations), real equality of opportunity (being event-defined rather than time-based, both teams get the same number of chances), separation of powers—and potentially perpetual change. It’s a game of intricate rules for a dynamic society, but one in which only the status of the moment, the status quo, counts; as such, it’s a virtually ahistorical sport, which may account for the vast industry of statistics and memorabilia it generates.

Far be it from me to endorse the silly rightist critiques of soccer that Hertzberg cites and also dismisses in his article; as with art, there’s much to gain from sport that emerges from other societies and reflects other mores. One thing’s for sure: there are no fat pro soccer players, and the constant agility of those who are buffeted by the winds of history tends to make for a greater physical elegance than is usually seen among those who are its short-term, intermittent, and opportunistic agents. And this is a sign of another sure thing as well: one game that finds equal favor wherever sports are played is that of freestyle interpretation.

The main point isn’t about record-keeping. It is about the arrogance of a family that has sought to turn the Presidency into another Trump franchise.

If no agreement can be reached, Britain could crash out of the E.U. without any exit deal, a prospect that horrifies business leaders and investors but is looked upon with equanimity by some ardent Brexiteers.